breathe
by speshulduck
Summary: it only hurts when i breathe. i promise.


title: breathe  
  
author: duck  
  
rating: pg -13  
  
author note: i actually cried while writing this one. muse strikes at 5am.  
  
summary: it only hurts when i breathe. i promise.  
  
It has been three days since the funeral and six since she died. I stare down into my empty bottle and wish I had another. There isn't enough Jack Daniel's in the world to drown out this pain. The soothing fire of whiskey sliding down my throat is long since spent and I am comfortless. Kathy knows better than to disturb me right now and has the kids safely shut away in their rooms.  
  
It only hurts when I breathe. I promise.  
  
Her badge sits on the table next to my empty bottle. I refused to hand it over and my crazy eyes were enough to silence any protests. Every cop feels it when someone's partner dies, and after my little display in the squad room I was told to take two weeks with pay, no questions asked. I wanted to throw myself into my work, but I guess a bottle will do instead.  
  
She was so beautiful, so angelic. My Olivia. My partner. My other half. I once scoffed at her notion of soul mates, but if I ever had one it was her. As cliched and Jerry Maguire as it sounds, she completed me and our work together was beyond anything I'd ever experienced. We completed each other's thoughts, we had good cop/bad cop down to a science, we knew each other's feelings as well as our own and dammit if feels like there's a piece of me ripped out from inside.  
  
All my fault.  
  
All my goddamn fault. Partners watch each other's backs in the field. It's a natural instinct. We were investigating this rape, your everyday average case--if there is such a thing at SVU--and we were joking about god-knows-what. We should have been more careful in that warehouse. I should have been more careful. She was facing me, laughing and smiling. I can still see her smile clear as day. I have every curve of those lips memorized as if I had claimed them for my own.  
  
Laughing.  
  
And then her chest exploded. I later figured out the bullet lodged in my arm, but I didn't feel it. All I felt was the pain of her, the exquisite torture of death. She fell forward towards me and I caught her, slumping to the ground with her.  
  
Those beautiful lips moved soundlessly, the red stain no longer just from lipstick. I cradled her to my chest, calling for a bus automatically. I didn't hear the words of the operator, or the whine of the siren as it approached. This was *my* Olivia dying in my arms. My life. My reason for going to work every day.  
  
She pulled my head down to hers and whispered that she loved me. That I had to let her go. I refused. I crushed her lips--bloodstained as they were-- against mine, not in claim but in love. I told her she wasn't ever leaving me.  
  
She was dead by the time the ambulance got there. The EMTs found a deranged man howling his grief for all the world to hear. It was my Olivia that lay lifeless in my arms, and let there be no soul on earth who doesn't feel my pain.  
  
The funeral was a blur. One long line of people treating me like a widower, which I suppose in a way I am. A partnership is a marriage and mine was deeper than most. Deeper perhaps than my own legally binding marriage.  
  
The three days since the funeral area lost in an alcohol-induced haze. They are pain-filled days I never want back. Agony of loss cuts through memory and the deep hurt tears at my heart and leaves it in shreds for me to piece back together again. I realize I am crying, finally truly crying, even as the soft patter of small feet draws my attention. My son stands before me.  
  
"Hey, Dickie," I croak. He holds his arms out and I pull him into my lap. He stands on his knees so we are face-to-face.  
  
"Mommy says you hurt right now," he says, honest eyes gazing into my own. "She says it's not the hurt in your arm."  
  
I shift my bandaged arm gingerly. "No, the pain isn't there."  
  
"Where is it?" His child's simple curiosity pulls more tears from my eyes. I was always taught that men don't cry, but I have a sudden urge to instill more modern values in my only son.  
  
"When a person loses something very important, it hurts a lot. It's not the kind of hurt you get when you scrape your knees or anything." I try to find a better explanation. "It's like your heart swells up with sadness and you have trouble breathing."  
  
"You lost 'Livia," he pronounces solemnly. I nod. "So she was important to you."  
  
"Very." I'll save the explanation of partners for another day.  
  
"Would you feel like this if Mommy died?" His question catches me off guard. With startling clarity I realize I have no idea.  
  
"I'm sure I would," I manage to say. He accepts my assurances and reaches up to wipe away my tears gently.  
  
"You should sleep, Daddy," he says earnestly. "Sleep always makes things better." He clambers down from my lap and I watch his movements with a renewed appreciation. I let him lead me upstairs, turning off the lights as I go. I leave her badge on the table, unsure of its symbolism of my emotional infidelity.  
  
I put Dickie to bed and quietly slip into my own next to my wife. My tears have stopped for now and as I watch the steady rise and fall of Kathy's breathing, I decide to talk to her about it tomorrow.  
  
But for now all I can do is breathe and try to sleep. And it only hurts when I breathe. I promise.  
  
[end] 


End file.
